For those that are interested in the machine Williams & Sonoma is running 25% off this machine right now. Makes it $899 + plus tax with free S/H. Use coupon code SAVENOW at checkout to get the savings. They had the same deal last year and I know a lot of people were waiting for it to come back, well here it is. Makes a high value dollar machine even more of a bargain. If I didn't already have a machine this one would be pretty high on my list.

I've had my BES900XL for almost a week (SN ending in 007554 us/can). I have read a lot of the 114 or so pages in this thread (Yikes! my eyes are tired). I have a few "amens" to the posts here, in particular, I was impressed by "9Bars'" early post

I have had almost all the exact same comments so That's why the link to his post. It is worth reading (as are quite a few others JMHO).

About the only thing I wanted to add was this observation (YMMV):

I am using the Breville single walled double shot basket with very good success. I have achieved this by paying attention to some (to me) critical details.

Now, in future, I will probably try some of the other baskets mentioned in the thread, but, you should (IMHO) be able to achieve very good results using the supplied single wall baskets.

From a purely mechanical viewpoint the supplied basket is a good place to start. I am going to see what the other baskets can bring in the future to better extraction, etc. etc..

FRESH BEANS! Did I mention FRESH BEANS? (Basic but so true) I live in the Chicago area so I am lucky to have some good roasters close by. However, UPS and FEDEX et al. can put the roasters close by to almost all of us.

I was out of fresh beans when the unit arrived so I went to (please don't flame me I was desperate lol) a "Big Box" Coffee store (which shall remain nameless but you know who it is lmao). I wasted about an hour fiddling with their beans. Results? Almost no creme and very little taste. Not completely terrible but not really good either.

The next day I received my shipment from a local roaster that I respect. Yeah Babyy! That's what I'm talking about!

All the difference in the world. Second shot was "dialed in". So you probably guessed that the only use, to me, for the double-walled baskets is to use them for cleaning, since the manual says that the double-walled baskets are for pre-ground coffee. I will never ever buy coffee beans with no "roasted on Date" on the bag!

So the "Drill" (for me YMMV)

1.) I always weigh my beans (17g per basket) and grind.

2.) I distribute the grounds using the E,W,N,S method (ala Tony @ Metropolis, and Gail )

3.) As Tony at Metropolis Coffe mentions in his video, "Flush, and wipe"! (Group head flush and wipe off top rim)

4.) The tamper gets pushed down until it is just even to the top of the basket. I rotate the tamper 90 deg (2X) to polish the load.

3.) It took me about 6 pulls to achieve very good extraction and the pucks are firm and come out very cleanly.

In closing, I have to thank the guy at Breville who did the tamping/pull video, Gail and Kat for their series of videos, Whole Latte Love's videos, Metropolis's videos, and this forum, in particular, for making this an easy "start-up".

For those that are interested in the machine Williams & Sonoma is running 25% off this machine right now. Makes it $899 + plus tax with free S/H. Use coupon code SAVENOW at checkout to get the savings. They had the same deal last year and I know a lot of people were waiting for it to come back, well here it is. Makes a high value dollar machine even more of a bargain. If I didn't already have a machine this one would be pretty high on my list.

folks, do NOT ignore this deal. the WS sale was 30% off last year, so i got my BDB for $839. AFAICT there were no greater deals the rest of 2012. if 2013 turns out the same, you will either pay too much for a new BDB, or you will wait a year to get one. don't get caught out looking for something else.

oh, and do what i didn't do... buy it with a visa card that automatically doubles the length of the factory warranty. i used discover card, which does not do this, even though i have a high-roller visa that would have given me the double warranty. doh!

1 cup 2 cup is counted, manual and a 25sec shot is still a shot as well as a 56sec shot

so when is a shot a shot? once a trigger in on and then turned off? so a flush is a shot in this case - some said here the computer starts to count when it reaches 7sec that is when i declares a shot will be counted until it says clean me

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